Panmnai Co-Operative

Panmnai Co-Operative

Introduction

This report has focused on the membership owned community business named Panmai Co-Operative, in which approximately 300 members are working. In this report SWOT analysis is given for the Panmai Co-operative.

Background of the Community Business

During the 1991, ATA (Appropriate Technology Association) a Thailand NGO, had taken responsibility for the sale of products made by LWDP (Local Weaving Development Project). However, there was a need for the women weavers to suppose that this responsibility was becoming increasingly clear for the women to work. Knowing the fact and emerging need for the working women. Specifically for this purpose, ATA involvement in the project was phased out eventually. As a result, a women's co-operative business which was called Panmai, meaning “Many Trees” was established, in order to lay the groundwork for women weavers' for the extra involvement in the management and marketing of the products, the other “trees” consisted of a gas station, and a cottage industry textile group (http://www.ganesha.co.uk/profiles/Panmai.php). NGO workers in Thailand, who were being employed by Local Weaving Development Project were supposed to be responsible for providing training in, financial management group administration, marketing management and production techniques to the weavers' groups. However, it was also assumed that that the weavers belonging to the Panmai group would in the long run become self-reliant. Members of Panmai were therefore, appreciative to hold one to 10 shares in the co-operative pay certain fees to their weavers' groups and sell their crafts to Panmai. It was also hoped that the Panmai co-operative would also sell the goods at its retail stores or at exhibitions, to wholesalers or on delivery, and at the end of the year; profits of the group will be distributed between its shareholders. Considering this, the villagers primarily purchased 25 percent of the shares of the Panmai co-operative, with the remainder of the business owned by ATA (Appropriate Technology Association) and a few other NGOs. The villagers had increased their ownership to 31 per cent by 1993 and wanted to eventually own at least 50 per cent of the co-operative's shares.

Discussion

SWOT-analysis is a tool for structuring the available information; it does not give clear and explicit recommendations for concrete answers. It only helps to visualize the main factors, and to evaluate in the first approximation, the expectation of certain events. Formulation based on the recommendations of this information - the work of the analyst. In the case of Panmai Co-operative, there is still a need to know some of the facts which are very important for the community business to know about. SWOT-analysis is misleading; the results depend strongly on the completeness and quality of the original information. In order to conduct SWOT-analysis is required or experts with a very deep understanding of the current status and trends of the market, or a very large amount of work on the collection and analysis of primary data in order to achieve this understanding. Mistakes made during the formation of the table (the inclusion of extra factors or loss of ...